Archivists compiled this inventory incorporating several small acquisitions of material
relating to Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin in 2003. Accession 2016.044 was added to this
collection September 20, 2016.

Stellar atmospheres : a contribution to the
observational study of high temperature in the reversing layers of stars,
Payne-Gaposchkin's Ph.D. dissertation (Rad T. P346)

Magellanic Clouds, contains seventeen photographic charts of Magellanic Clouds.
One is reportedly by Henrietta Leavitt and other persons not identified. Used by
Gaposchkin and Frances Wright. (UAV 630.253)

Photographs of Cecilia Gaposchkin working with a blink microscope, ca. 1940's,
Gaposchkin portrait photograph, 1956, and a group portrait of astronomers including
Gaposchkin and Harlow Shapley, ca. 1924. (HUP Payne-Gaposchkin)

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin
(1900-1979), the first woman to attain a full professorship through
a
regular faculty promotion at Harvard University,
was a pioneer in astrophysics and a leading authority
on the brightness of variable stars. Her work was of
fundamental importance in the study of stellar
atmospheres and the research techniques that she
perfected for analyzing starlight photographically were widely used and helped
provide astronomers with a better understanding of the
composition of stars.

Education and
Research

Gaposchkin was born in Wendover,
Buckinghamshire, England on May 10,
1900 to Edward Payne and Emma
Pertz. Growing up in England, Gaposchkin attended both
religious and private grammar schools. In 1919 she entered Newnham
College at Cambridge University with the intention
of studying botany, physics, and
chemistry. However, after listening to a lecture by
astrophysicist Arthur Eddington about solar eclipses, she
decided to change her academic direction and pursue a career in astronomy. At Newnham
College, Gaposchkin attended as many astronomy classes as she could, set up a
telescope, and presided over the college's Science Society.

Faced with limited
academic opportunities in Great Britain, Gaposchkin
decided to attend school in the United States and applied for a fellowship
to do research at the Harvard College Observatory in 1923. She
became one of the first students in Harvard's new graduate program in astronomy.
Gaposchkin continued her studies of variable stars as the first PhD student in
astronomy at Radcliffe College in 1924. Gaposchkin's research
work at Radcliffe involved the analysis of Harvard University's immense collection
of
spectra photographs, a collection consisting of tens of
thousands of images. Her findings, published in her work entitled Stellar Atmospheres, A Contribution to the Observational
Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars, determined
stellar temperatures and established that stars were made up of
hydrogen and helium with traces of other
elements.

Upon graduation, Gaposchkin continued her work at Harvard as an
astronomer pursuing her studies of the stars and the structure of the
Milky Way Galaxy. In collaboration with her
husband, Sergei, a Russian astronomer émigré working
at the observatory, Gaposchkin undertook the systematic investigation
of
all known variable stars brighter than the tenth magnitude and published
her results in 1938. Her work, Variable Stars,
became the standard reference in the field. During the 1930's and 1940's,
both Cecilia and Sergei, together with 29 assistants in the Observatory, made more
than 1,250,000 observations of variable stars and laid the groundwork for all
subsequent work on them and their use as indicators of the structure of the galaxy.
Finally, in the 1960's, the Gaposchkins made more than two million photographic
estimates of the stars in the two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way Galaxy, the
Magellanic Clouds.

Conclusion

Gaposchkin entered
Harvard's academic community when opportunities for women in the field
of
astronomy were limited. Despite her discoveries, she lacked the recognition
afforded her male counterparts and received a smaller salary. In addition to her
scientific work, she edited the volumes published by the Harvard Observatory and
papers submitted by the staff to outside journals. She also taught a series of
astronomy lecture courses. It was not until 1938 that she received a permanent
appointment to the Harvard staff; in 1956 she finally received a full professorship.
That same year she became chair of the Astronomy Department,
the first woman to chair a department at Harvard University. She retired from active
teaching in 1966.

Gaposchkin was recognized by her peers for her definitive
studies of variable stars. She authored or coauthored nine books and
351
papers between 1925 and 1979. These studies of variable stars and
novae were widely read by both students and
astronomers and helped define the structure of the galaxy and the paths
of stellar evolution.

Family

Cecilia Gaposchkin married
Sergei in 1934. They had three children: Edward Michael, Katharine
Leonora (Haramundanis), and Peter John Arthur.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin died on
December 7, 1979

Bibliography

Ginerich, Owen.
"The
Most Brilliant PhD Thesis Ever Written in Astronomy." In
The Starry Universe: The Cecilia
Payne-Gaposchkin Centenary. Schenectady, New York : L. Davis Press, 2001.

Scope and Content: Contains letters from 1959 concerning astronomy department affairs,
some relating to students, a letter from Sergei Gaposchkin to
Cecilia, and a few of Gaposchkin's scientific notes, graphs, and
tables.

Scope and Content: Contains Payne-Gaposchkin’s autobiography (second edition, 1996) which includes
the personal recollections of her daughter, Katherine Haramundanis, a scientific
appreciation by astrophysicist Jesse L. Greenstein, a historical essay by the
curator of mathematics at the Smithsonian Institution Peggy Kidwell, and an
introduction by astronomer Virginia Trimble.

Scope and Content: The images in this series illustrate
Gaposchkin's design and execution of a needlepoint based on an
astronomical image.

Biographical Note: In 1976 Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was asked by
a friend, John R. Whitman, to produce a needlepoint based on the
images of the supernova Cassiopeia-A
(Cas-A). The images had originally appeared in an
article in the Scientific American
entitled: "X Rays from Supernova Remnants" (December
1975).